Tech soccer captain Conner Williams shows resolve through injuries

First sideline spell

Texas Tech's Conner Williams walks out of the locker room after half time during their 3-0 win against Francis Marion on Sunday at the John Walker Soccer Complex. (Scott MacWatters/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

Texas Tech's Conner Williams tears up as Tiffini Smith, a graduating senior, walks out onto the field for senior day before their game against Francis Marion on Sunday at the John Walker Soccer Complex.

Conner Williams stood along the green turf of the John Walker Soccer Complex on Sunday afternoon with a handful of teammates, eager to celebrate Texas Tech soccer’s senior day against Francis Marion.

Williams watched the pregame ceremony, shedding a few tears as the nine names of her classmates were called and applause rang through the bleachers.

She said she always gets a little emotional at senior day, but Sunday was different — Williams was supposed to be one of the names called.

The enormous brace on her right leg tells the story of why Williams, a redshirt junior, didn’t get a framed jersey before Sunday’s 3-0 win.

The midfielder is in the midst of her second season-ending injury in the last three years.

She redshirted her sophomore season after suffering a knee injury in the summer. After Tech’s fifth game this year, she tore more ligaments in her other knee to end her year prematurely.

“I was bawling the whole time,” Williams said Sunday. “This is the class I came here with and so it’s really hard for me to spend four years with them and not graduate them and see them go because I expected to be leaving with them.”

But Williams knows she is still an integral part of the team. Although she can’t patrol the field anymore, she has a much more important role: Texas Tech soccer’s lone captain.

First sideline spell

Williams was part of a highly-touted recruiting classes under now sixth-year coach Tom Stone.

Along with nearly more than half-a-dozen other freshmen, she logged hundreds of minutes in the 2009 season. She started every match, scoring four goals and notching six assists in a stellar rookie campaign.

Following the season, she went to club nationals with several teammates to stay in offseason form.

In her first game of the tournament, Williams went down with a devastating left-knee injury: torn anterior crucial ligament, torn medial crucial ligament and tears in both menisci, she said.

It was the kind of injury that ended her sophomore season months before it was slated to start.

“That season was really hard for me just because I was so young and I felt like my whole life had ended,” Williams said.

Only 19 years old, Williams had to handle the emotions and mentality of coming back from a season-ending injury — all while her teammates flourished on the field.

Without Williams, the Red Raiders went 11-8-1 and were a borderline NCAA Tournament team.

Like most young athletes, Williams found herself struggling with her role on the team, sometimes feeling she wasn’t part of it.

“It’s almost harder to watch them win than it is to watch them lose at first,” she said. “This sounds really selfish, because if they’re losing, you’re like, ‘it’s not my fault.’ But when they’re winning, it’s like, ‘you know, I’m not part of that.’”

Before her injury, Williams had spent almost no time on the sideline her entire life.

Besides a couple of bumps and bruises on the field before college, this was the only time she had missed such a long stretch.

Getting back wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be a short recovery.

More than anything, coming back from an ACL injury is about having the right mentality, Stone says.

Williams admits the first rehab spell wasn’t her best effort.

“I was really I guess lazy in my rehabilitation because I just didn’t want to go through it,” Williams said. “It was hard, and I didn’t want to get back in shape.”

Career revival

Williams spent the entire 2010 season rehabbing and trying to get back to form. In 2011, she still had to battle the limitations of her injury, playing in just seven matches.

She didn’t feel 100 percent again until early 2012, but it was at that time she started showing more of her role on the team than just on the field.

Williams said she started to assume a captain role in the offseason this spring, and this summer it was made official.

Although just a junior in eligibility, she was tasked with leading the team as it searches for its first NCAA Tournament berth.

Stone said Williams is the natural leader of Tech soccer.

Junior Hayley Haagsma said Williams is a true leader that was born to lead the Red Raiders.

Haagsma, a junior, first saw the inklings of her future captain when Haagsma went down with an ACL injury midway through the 2010 season, just months removed from Williams’ injury.

The two battled together to get back from their respective injuries, bonding through training and becoming close friends.

“She would just kind of talk me through what to expect through surgery and after that,” Haagsma said, “like ‘OK, you’re not going to be able to walk on it for a couple of weeks, you’re going to be OK, crutches are going to (stink), but you’ll make it through. ... That definitely helped just the rehab portion of getting back onto the field.”

Laura Schnettgoecke, assistant athletic trainer, said Williams shows the kind of mentality needed to get through a knee injury.

She also shows the kind of off-the-field leadership necessary for a captain.

“Even in the training room,” Schnettgoecke said, “she shows leadership when there are other girls in there. She does really well in being a leader on the field, in the training room, wherever it might be.”

Williams and the Red Raiders were ready in August. She said she was at her best, and Tech had its deepest bench since Williams got here; the Red Raiders were ready to make the push for the postseason.

“I feel like the beginning of this fall was the best I’d ever played,” Williams said.”

After Tech’s fifth game of the season — all wins — the Red Raiders lost their captain, and the season threatened to take a turn for the worse.

A captain’s mentality

As soon as it happened, Williams knew.

In a late-August practice session, Williams went down with another ACL tear — this time to her right knee.

“I was on the field screaming,” she said, “and I was like, ‘I can’t do this again, I can’t do this again.’”

Williams knew all too well what it was like to injure a knee. Her first injury essentially cost her two years of play.

Stone, Haagsma and Schnettgoecke ran over to their injured captain, Williams recalled.

“I was like, ‘God, please. Not Conner, not again. We can’t go through this again,” Haagsma said.

When the MRI results came back showing a torn ACL, Williams said she was emotionless.

She wasn’t going to shed tears and be “pouty,” like she said she was last time.

Even though she wouldn’t play another minute for Tech soccer this year, Williams showed what made her the ideal choice for the captainship.

“I don’t think about my injury because I feel like it’s time wasting,” she said. “I feel like I should be thinking about the girls and what I can do to help them instead of having self pity on myself.”

The injury wasn’t just going to affect Williams, it would affect the entire mindset of the Red Raiders, Stone said.

If Williams was down, so would the team.

“If her attitude was negative, if it was downtrodden, if she played the victim, then it was going to affect the team — And she never went there,” Stone said.”

Stone made it clear he wanted Williams to remain team captain.

Haagsma was appointed the on-the-field captain, and Haagsma said the team responded to Williams’ injury the way Williams would respond: by seizing the moment.

“It just kind of turned everyone’s world around a little bit. Made us really put into perspective the opportunity we have to step on the field every day,” Haagsma said, “... and made us want to play absolutely our hardest not just for us, not just for our goals of trying to win the Big 12 and do good in the postseason, but just to have a good record this season in honor of her.”

Williams’ role is different now, but in a way, it’s still the same.

She still leads, although from the sideline.

“You can cheer, you can organize, you can speak your mind from the side but you can’t actually go out there and do anything,” Stone said, “and so there’s some of that for her. The sideline is a much worse place for Conner because she’s a very intense individual. So she’s maintained that intensity on the sideline.”

Williams said her main priority on the field now is to keep the bench involved.

On Sunday, she was the only player to remain standing after the Red Raiders got a first-minute goal.

When Stone sat down a few minutes later, Williams remained standing, fixated on the action.

Williams is still going through rehab, and she said she should be good to go in late spring. She could apply for a medical hardship, but she hasn’t though about it yet — she is focused more on her team than her career.

Since Williams has remained focus on the team’s overall success, the Red Raiders have flourished and are off to a 12-4 start (3-2 in Big 12 play).

“Our team draws inspiration from her,” Stone said, “so she knows she has the responsibility to bust it and get back as fast as possible and resume her play on the field. When we see that from her, the rest of the team is going to follow suit.”